Sony Xperia Z4 pictures reveal what Sony's next flagship will look like

With Sony yet to announce the Xperia Z4 release, there's plenty of gossip floating around. The latest to join the pack are these 3D renders.

These aren't leaked press images, so they aren't a final confirmed device design, but over at nowhereelse.fr it's claimed that these come from a trusted source and are for internal use at Sony.

There's little surprise either. Sony has found form with its OmniBalance design over the refinement of the Z series. If anything, this device looks a little on the fat side, although the device is claimed to measure 146.3 x 71.9 x 7.2mm.

The left-hand side only has the covered SIM tray and it looks a little small to accommodate microSD too - unless Sony has done something clever. Perhaps it's abandoning external storage expansion, perhaps it's found some clever way to stack the cards internally.

Nowhereelse.fr

The right-hand side offers up the central side-mounted power button, below which is the volume and at the bottom the camera button. That layout of buttons is the same as the Z3, so no surprises there.

You can make out the plastic corners designed to offer more protection, but the removal of the dock charging point on the side fits the move to waterproofed Micro-USB. Sony recently announced the Sony Xperia M4 Aqua which did exactly this, so we know that's coming to the Z4.

Comparing to other leaks, we've previously seen what claimed to the Sony Xperia Z4 chassis and this matches these renders. Of course, it's perfectly feasible that the renders were based on the chassis pictured below.

xperiablog.net/

The leaked Sony Xperia Z4 specs suggest a Qualcomm Snapdragon 810 chipset, 3 or 4GB of RAM, and a 5.2-inch display with either a full HD or Quad HD display. We'd expect the rear camera to stick at 20.7 megapixels.

There's no confirmed word on release date yet, but with Sony not announcing the Xperia Z4 at CES or MWC, the next expected show would be IFA 2015 in September.